About Me

Weazl received a BA in Economics with an emphasis on developing countries from Yale University in the late 80's, then received his JD from Columbia Law School in the early 90's. He has practiced as both a corporate lawyer and as a criminal lawyer for nearly a decade, but currently tries to balance an interest in the esoteric with a need to decipher the moment, howling to the moon that the ship is sinking.

Sunday, September 17, 2006

Writing on Stone May Be Oldest in the Americas

By JOHN NOBLE WILFORDPublished: September 14, 2006

A stone slab found in the state of Veracruz in Mexico bears3,000-year-old writing previously unknown to scholars, according toarchaeologists who say it is an example of the oldest script everdiscovered in the Western Hemisphere.

The order and pattern of carved symbols appeared to be that of atrue writing system, according to the Mexican scientists who havestudied the slab and colleagues from the United States. It hadcharacteristics strikingly similar to imagery of the Olmeccivilization, considered the earliest in pre-Columbian America,they said.

Finding a heretofore-unknown writing system is a rare event. One ofthe last such discoveries, scholars say, was the Indus Valleyscript, identified by archaeologists in 1924.

The inscription on the stone slab, with 62 distinct signs, some ofthem repeated, has been tentatively dated to at least 900 B.C., andpossibly earlier. That is 400 years or more before writing had beenknown to exist in Mesoamerica, the region from central Mexicothrough much of Central America ? and by extension, to existanywhere in the Hemisphere.

Scientists had not previously found any script that wasunambiguously associated with the Olmec culture, which flourishedalong the Gulf of Mexico in Vera Cruz and Tobasco well before theZapotec and Maya people rose to prominence elsewhere in the region.Until now, the Olmec were known mainly for the colossal stone headsthey created and displayed at monumental buildings in their rulingcities.

The inscribed stone slab was discovered by Maria del CarmenRodriguez of the National Institute of Anthropology and History ofMexico and by Ponciano Ortiz of Veracruz University. Thearchaeologists, who are husband and wife, are the lead authors ofthe report of the find, which will be published Friday in thejournal Science.

The signs incised on the 26-pound stone, the researchers said inthe report, “link the Olmec to literacy, document an unsuspectedwriting system and reveal a new complexity to this civilization.”

Noting that the text “conforms to all expectations of writing,” theresearchers wrote that the sequences of signs reflected “patterns oflanguage, with the probable presence of syntax andlanguage-dependant word orders.” Several paired sequences of signs,scholars said, have prompted speculation that the text may containcouplets of poetry.

Experts who have examined the symbols on the stone slab said theywould need many more examples before they could hope to decipherthem and read what is written. It appeared, they said, that thesymbols in the inscription were unrelated to later Mesoamericanscripts, suggesting that this Olmec writing might have beenpracticed for only a few generations and may never have spread tosurrounding cultures.

Stephen D. Houston of Brown University, a co-author of the reportand an authority on ancient writing systems, acknowledged that thiswas a puzzle, and would probably be emphasized by some scholars whoquestion the influence of the Olmec on the course of laterMesoamerican cultures.

But Dr. Houston called the discovery tantalizing, saying, “It couldbe the beginning of a new era of focus on the Olmec civilization.”

Other participants in the research include Michael D. Coe of Yale;Karl A. Taube of the University of California, Riverside; andAlfredo Delgado Calderon of the National Institute of Anthropologyand History.

Mesoamerica researchers who were not involved in the Veracruzdiscovery agreed that the signs appeared to be a true script, andthat the slab could be expected to inspire more intensive study ofthe Olmecs, whose civilization emerged about 1200 B. C. and had allbut disappeared by 400 B. C.

In an accompanying article in Science, Mary Pohl, an anthropologistat Florida State University who has excavated Olmec ruins, wasquoted as saying, “This is an exciting discovery of greatsignificance.”

A few other researchers were skeptical of the dating of theinscription, noting that the stone was uncovered in a gravel quarrywhere it and other artifacts were jumbled and may have been out oftheir original context.

The discovery team said that ceramic shards, clay figurines andother broken artifacts accompanying the stone appeared to be from aparticular phase of Olmec culture that ended about 900 B. C. Butthey acknowledged that the disarray at the site made it impossibleto determine whether the stone had originally been in a placerelating to the governing elite or to religious ceremony.

Richard A. Diehl, a specialist in Olmec research at the Universityof Alabama and another co-author of the report, said, “Mycolleagues and I are absolutely convinced the stone is authentic.”

The stone slab first came to light in 1999, when road buildersdigging gravel came across it among debris from an ancient mound atCascajal, a place the archaeologists called the “Olmec heartland.”The village is on an island in southern Veracruz about a mile fromSan Lorenzo, where ruins have been found of the dominant Olmeccity, which stood from 1200 B. C. to 900 B. C.

When the stone surfaced, Dr. Rodriguez and Dr. Ortiz were calledin, and quickly recognized the potential importance of the find.

Only after six years of further excavations searching for morewriting specimens, and comparative analysis with previously knownOlmec iconography, did the two archaeologists invite otherMesoamerica scholars to join the study earlier this year. Thoughsome other reported examples of Olmec “writing” in recent yearsfailed to stand up to scrutiny, the team concluded that theCascajal stone, as it is being called, was the real thing.

The tiny, delicate symbols are incised on the concave top surfaceof a block of soft stone that measures about 14 inches long, 8inches wide and 5 inches thick.

Dr. Houston, who was a leader in deciphering Maya writing, examinedthe stone looking for clues that the symbols were true writing andnot just iconography unrelated to a language. He said in aninterview that he detected regular patterns and order, suggesting“a text segmented into what almost look like sentences, with clearbeginnings and clear endings.”

Some of the pictographic signs were frequently repeated, Dr.Houston said, particularly ones that looked like an insect or alizard. He suspected that these might be signs alerting the readerto the use of words that sound alike but have different meanings -as in the difference between “I” and “eye” in English.

All in all, Dr. Houston concluded, “the linear sequencing, theregularity of signs, the clear patterns of ordering, they tell methis is writing. But we don’t know what it says.”